Category: OPINION

By Silvia Espíndola*

The author is Undersecretary of International Cooperation of the Republic of Ecuador. Following are excerpts from his statement at the Workshop titled South-South Cooperation forty years since BAPA: Challenges and Opportunities during the ECOSOC Development Cooperation Forum (DCF) meeting, held in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on September 6, 2017 – in the run-up to the UN Day for South-South Cooperation was celebrated worldwide on September 12. – The Editor

GENEVA (IDN-INPS | SouthNews) – Since the Buenos Aires Plan of Action for Promoting and Implementing Technical Cooperation among developing countries (1978), South-South cooperation has been steadily gaining momentum and has shown encouraging trends. Many initiatives attest to the increasing importance of South-South cooperation as a growing dimension of international cooperation for development.

Viewpoint by Jonathan Power*

LUND, Sweden (IDN-INPS) – “What did these vain and presumptuous men intend? How did they expect to raise their lofty mass against God, when they had built it above all the mountains and clouds of the earth’s atmosphere?” This is St. Augustine writing about Babylon in his ‘City of God’. In more modern times Jonathan Raban has written in ‘Soft City’: “The city has always been an embodiment of hope and a source of festering guilt: A dream pursued, and found vain, wanting and destructive.”

St. Augustine wrote the ‘City of God’ in a state of sorrowful contemplation. The city of man, he believed, ought to be a harmonious reflection of the City of God. In actuality it is vulgar, lazy and corrupt, a place so brutish that it lacks even the dignity of the satanic. St Augustine would surely write the same way if reincarnated in Atlanta, Johannesburg, Mumbai or Riyadh.

By Somar Wijayadasa*

NEW YORK (IDN) – The leaders of the five BRICS nations (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) held their 9th annual Summit in Xiamen, China, from September 3 to 5, 2017, under the theme “Stronger Partnership for a Brighter Future”

A significant change from the norm was to invite non-BRICS countries, and name the event as “BRICS Plus Summit”. Expanding its participation is a positive manifestation that the BRICS nations are now ready to translate their economic power into global governance.

Over 1000 delegates from many countries attended the meeting including leaders of Egypt, Mexico, Thailand, Guinea and Tajikistan.

Viewpoint by Jonathan Power*

LUND, Sweden (IDN-INPS) – The big mistake, apparently about to be made by President Trump, in undoing the nuclear agreement made by President Barack Obama with Iran is not just that he intends to go backwards, it is that he doesn’t intend to go forwards. (To be fair, neither did Obama.)

What the Iranians negotiated about was not so much the “bomb” – to be or not to be – but about their pride and their position in the world and their right to become a thriving economic and political power inured from sanctions or military threats. (Sanctions were imposed before the nuclear issue came to the fore.)

Viewpoint by Jonathan Power*

LUND, Sweden (IDN-INPS) – It’s the most repeated maxim in all the reporting on Afghanistan: “The Americans have the watches, the Taliban have the time.”

Dead right! This is America’s longest war ever, 16 years and counting. President Donald Trump, admitting he was reversing his campaign call for pulling out, has now decided to stay in, sending to Afghanistan another 3,900 troops to reinforce the 8,400 there now.

Trump doesn’t claim it will do the job of defeating the Taliban. In fact he lays out no long-term strategy at all. It’s not difficult to imagine that in a decade the same stalemate will exist.

Viewpoint by Jonathan Power*

LUND, Sweden (IDN-INPS) – Everyone has their favourite sounds – a ball on a cricket bat on a summer’s afternoon, birds singing, waves breaking on the beach, the coffee pot perking on the stove, children playing scoobydoo. Mine are the quiet sounds of the English Lake District- William Wordsworth’s:

‘“A flock of sheep that leisurely pass by one after one; the sound of rain and bees murmuring; the fall of rivers, wind and lakes, smooth fields; white sheets of water, and pure sky.”

Viewpoint by Jonathan Power*

LUND, Sweden (IDN-INPS) – It’s not that many years ago that Warren Christopher, the U.S. Secretary of State, commenting on the outbreak of separatist ethnic strife in the 1990s in countries such as Somalia, Zaire, Rwanda, East Timor and ex-Yugoslavia, asked. “Where will it end? Will it end with 5,000 countries?”

It was a serious misjudgement. Separatist wars have fallen sharply. Minorities are not fighting for their own patch of territory at the rate they were. Since 1993 the number of wars of self-determination has been halved.

By Somar Wijayadasa*

NEW YORK (IDN) – The U.S. sanctions against Russia, passed on July 27, in retaliation for Russia’s alleged interference in the 2016 presidential election may have ruined relations between the two countries. 

The sanctions targeting Russia’s defense, intelligence, mining, shipping and railway industries, and restricting dealings with Russian banks and energy companies would have crippling effects on the already straddled Russian economy.

The bill may penalize individuals or companies who invest in the construction of Russian energy pipelines, or who provide services for such projects.

By Manuel F. Montes*

GENEVA (IDN | SOUTHVIEWS) – In discussions at the UN about achieving Agenda 2030, it has become de rigueur to highlight the role of the private sector. It is often introduced as the discovery of the idea that private sector investment and financing is indispensable to achieving Agenda 2030.

For developed country diplomats and their associated experts this new celebrity treatment appears to be an article of faith, at least during negotiations on economic matters in the UN. They are foisting a misleading ‘Trumpian’ exaggeration that is technically harmful to development policymaking and to Agenda 2030.

The practical, and long-running, reality is that investment by enterprises has always been indispensable to growth and development. It is NOT a new reality. It’s NOT a reality specific only to Agenda 2030.

Viewpoint by Jonathan Power*

LUND, Sweden (IDN-INPS) – A few recent words from Jack Matlock who was U.S. ambassador to Moscow under presidents Reagan and Bush senior: “The Ukraine crisis is a product, in large part, of the policy of indefinite expansion of NATO to the east. If there had been no possibility of Ukraine ever becoming part of NATO, and therefore Sevastopol (the ex-Soviet naval port in Crimea) becoming a NATO base Russia would not have invaded Crimea.”

He goes on to say: “Americans have lived for nearly two centuries with the Monroe Doctrine [which forbids non-Americans to seize land or intervene in Latin America]. Why don’t we understand that other countries are sensitive about military bases from potential rivals not only coming up to their borders, but also taking land that historically they have considered theirs. These are extremely emotional issues – issues that are made to order for any authoritarian leader that wants to strengthen his rule”.